The question came up as to it's table-fare worthiness, but I explained that this fish had meat much like that of a mangrove snapper, although they typically have to get larger than mangroves to get good size filets. Nonetheless, it was in the cooler. As...
could pick a spot at random and find good bottom and fish. We hadn't been in the water 5 minutes before a 40-50lb cubera snapper comes by and I unwittingly descend and give chase. I was able to get close enough for a view but not much else. The beast...
West we went the worse the viz got. We swam around for a few minutes trying to get our bearings when we chase a couple of snappers to an area that finally looks familiar. Almost immediately, I spot another grouper shooting under a ledge for cover. This...
me (and hopefully some of you) tremendously along the way. I have looked forward to my Summer escapades chasing mahi, snapper, grouper, hogfish and facing sharks and goliaths every Spring... that is, up until this year. Life as we all know gets...
better to have fish in the box! At our next spot, Carlos and I were still in the water together when he spots a nice Cubera Snapper while dusting up the bottom trying to bring some fish in. I spot it from the surface as well and I watch as he approaches...
As soon as I do, I see a grouper swimming along and I consider dropping in on it when I see to it's left a beautiful Mutton Snapper. I try to calm down but excitedly breathe up (more like "gasp" up) and drop on this gorgeous specimen. As usual when...
the ledge finding no fish, I glance over to my right as I start to ascend when I spot what seems to be about a 10lb Cubera Snapper. Cubera's are not common in this area or depth and I have only shot one other here about 12 years ago, so I immediately...
a couple of our spots on the way home. Our plan to head Southwest coincided with the second part of our plan to find the snappers. You see, last week was the full moon and the mangroves usually head out to spawn in the latter part of June after a full...
about 3 hours), I woke up to beautiful calm weather and we quickly decide to head West this morning to see if the snappers have started moving out to spawn since we haven't seen any real numbers in shallower water. Since we had visited the clumps last...
and has beautiful relief with large coral heads strewn along the whole line of the reef. I start seeing small mutton snappers darting about as soon as I jumped in. I keep scouting the reef looking for a legal grouper when I hear my brother in law...
20-25 feet away catches my eye. As I focus a little more I see the outline and the telltale dot on the tail of a Mutton Snapper. The fish was sitting in the sand facing away from me and had camouflaged herself very well by changing her body color...
August 24-25, 2013 - Lucky #113! In a lean Snapper summer, the new grouper spot comes through again.
Type:
Gallery Image
Results 21 - 40 of 118
Gallery Spotlight
June 10-12, 2021 - 6th Annual Pirate Trip
After Covid-19 restrictions last year, everyone was itching to get back in the water this year. As always, an amazingly fun trip with lots of meat in the freezer to show for it!
After Covid-19 restrictions last year, everyone was itching to get back in the water this year. As always, an amazingly fun trip with lots of meat in the freezer to show for it!
After Covid-19 restrictions last year, everyone was itching to get back in the water this year. As always, an amazingly fun trip with lots of meat in the freezer to show for it!
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
A short vid from our Summer 2019 Bahamas Pirate Trip of the quickest landing of a #50 black grouper I've ever had. Proof that it only takes one fish to make the spearinglife spearfishing trip! Thanks to the pirate crew for making every year an adventure!
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
Back in March of 2010 I enrolled in and completed the FII Level One freediving course . I was extremely happy with the course content and the outcome (check out the SpearView ). Unfortunately for me, I'm not a professional freediver, so as with many people, life gets in the way and complicated which in turn keeps you from building a true regimen that reinforces all the good behavior learned in the course. Needless to say, I forgot some of the basics, fell back into many of my old bad habits...
I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....
Believe it or not my latest addition to my spearguns is not one for shooting fish (well at least not shooting to kill them). But it hopefully will help others watch online what I love to do underwater. I have made a camera mount for my Riffe Euro guns. This mount will fit on any Euro that has the reel inserts (basically all of them). It was terribly simple to make. The only fairly tricky part was putting together the actual mount screw for the camera tripod mount itself.
This past weekend, I finally got to go to The Blue Wild dive expo. After 3 years of everybody telling me about it and not being around to get to go to it, the stars finally aligned and I was able to check it out. Unfortunately, it meant missing out on 5-10mph winds and less than 1' seas inside the reef, but there were other reasons I couldn't get out this weekend, so I figured I would take advantage to check it out and possibly win something from the raffle to boot (I won't keep you in...
{sigplus link=oculusr5 index=1} {/sigplus}Hot on the heels of my review of the GoPro Hero2, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't follow up with a review of the case that resolves the one (and only one in my opinion) flaw in the Hero2 design, it's underwater focus (or lack thereof) flaw. You see, as I wrote about in the Hero2 review the curved lens on the stock case creates a focus fallacy when shooting underwater. It's fairly common knowledge now, so if you want to read about it, you can check...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 E Viz: 40-50 feet Temp: 80 F Well, the weather finally held up until I got down there and what weather it was this weekend! Saturday and Sunday had 5-10mph winds out of the West and a mild 1-2' seas as far as the eye could see. We only hoped that the change in the wind from the East last week to the West this week wouldn't wreak too much havoc with the fishing. We had heard that those that were dolphin fishing earlier in the week were having no luck in close and only...
Seas: 5-7 feet Winds: 15-20 SE Temp: 74 F Viz: 30-35 feet I decided to make an overnight trip this weekend and take a Monday off for the heck of it. I was hoping to be able to get into some snapper since the forecast had the weekend winds dying down (and hopefully the seas as well). Unfortunately, as you might have noticed from the stats above, neither of those things happened. The viz was awesome, but you had to weather some serious seas to fish it.
Winds: 5-10 variable Seas: 1-2 feet Surf Temp: +/- 73F Viz: 15-25 feet The viz was actually better than we had hoped for, but the water was pretty chilly. The moon was also wreaking havoc with the tides. Fortunately for us, it was the good kind of havoc. We jumped in expecting to have missed slack tide altogether and were able to dive for another 1 1/2 hours. Unfortunately, we had to cut our dive short not due to the tides, but due to a little run in with a couple of the locals I'm always...
Sat 6/23 Winds: East 5-10 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 82 F Viz: 20-25 ft Finally some weather worth diving for... The winds have laid down for about 4-5 days now and we are finally get back to business. The water is calm and a wonderful temperature too. We didn't catch a whole lot, but at least we got back in the water. Just the usual suspects today, black grouper and mangrove snapper. Still, it felt good to get back in the water after the last few weeks.
Winds: 10-20 East Seas: 3-5 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 5-10 feet Saturday was not too much fun. The seas were extra sloppy and the viz was not what I would like to see, even on the worst days. It didn't stop us from shooting our fill of mangroves, but it wasn't without it's effort. One of the spots we hit was only about 18-20 feet deep and we couldn't see the bottom much less the fish. We've gotten used to shooting in the low viz but its still difficult to do. You have to pick out the best of...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 S Temp: 88 F Viz: 10-15 feet My advance apologies for the brevity of this week's blog. Just not in a very literary mood this week, I guess. Luckily, it was a short weekend due to the fact that Father's Day was Sunday and I tried to head back home early to spend it with mine. Unfortunately, some people who are apparently guaranteed employment at the public works in Monroe County decided it would be a good idea to close down northbound US1 on the 18 mile stretch from...